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In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions whe

In programming, when you reuse others' work product it's considered good engineering practice. We call it "not reinventing the wheel." In most professions where the work product is in a natural language, reusing significant portions of others' work is called "plagiarism", and is considered a serious ethical violation. Reusing small portions for the sake of making a point, on the other hand, is covered by fair use rules. So yeah, licensing concerns might be a mostly irrelevant detail. The big questions about when you can and cannot reuse others' work product are already covered by a rigorously socially-enforced ethical standard, and the law. Both of those are more powerful than mere contracts in their own way.

dllthomas 13y ago
Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...
fdej 13y ago
I don't see the distinction you're trying to make here. It's plagiarism to copy someone's code without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's code if you give attribution. It's plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text if you give attribution. In either case, copying someone else's code or natural text is potentially copyright infringement, but that's a different matter.
- eric_cc 13y ago
  / * @author BigDave1974 over at SlashDot */
tjr 13y ago
I wonder if it would make sense to sell reusable chunks of text, like libraries of code.

dllthomas 13y ago

Think about free textbooks, which may be commercially printed (of course you have to pay for a physical object) but are also available online under CC-BY-SA. If something is well explained in, say, Wikipedia, I can lift it and put it directly into the textbook, with a credit, making only the small tweaks necessary to make it flow in context. This can be hugely valuable, but tacking on NC means no one can ever sell those physical copies (which some people prefer). I kind of hope this situation doesn't arise with TV Tropes, but you never know...

fdej 13y ago

I don't see the distinction you're trying to make here. It's plagiarism to copy someone's code without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's code if you give attribution. It's plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text without giving attribution. It's not plagiarism to copy someone's natural language text if you give attribution. In either case, copying someone else's code or natural text is potentially copyright infringement, but that's a different matter.

eric_cc 13y ago
/ * @author BigDave1974 over at SlashDot */

tjr 13y ago

I wonder if it would make sense to sell reusable chunks of text, like libraries of code.